


(when i think of your heart) i think of a snakebite to the chest

by opheliahyde



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Post-Series, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 01:32:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4121356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliahyde/pseuds/opheliahyde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days Scott thinks of leaving, some days he regrets ever coming back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(when i think of your heart) i think of a snakebite to the chest

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt _don’t, don’t even know, even when you say you know that you want to find my heart, tell me that you never wanted to / promise to hide up in my eyes, i would unburden you_
> 
> Title from Clementine von Radics' poem "Cleopatra's Palace, Or Why I didn't Call You Back".

When he comes back to the motel room, creeping back before sunrise, Kate doesn’t look at him, awake and staring at the ceiling as he passes through to the bathroom. **  
**

Scott tosses his stained clothes into the corner by the toilet, balling up the shirt and jeans so the blood doesn’t show until he can burn them, get rid of the evidence, careful not to trail any of it back to the room and steps into the shower, cleaning away any traces with cheap motel soap and shampoo.

(they’ll be moving on soon anyway, never staying in one place too long, pair of self-made orphans with no place to go–he laughs sometimes, a bitter-sharp sound that tastes of bile, thinking how he started it, but Kate finished it,wondering, waiting for the day when it’s his turn)

Scott slides in besides her, smooth-skinned and blood-free, dressed in stolen pajamas and she stays with him, laying together in the cool gloom of early morning, her shallow breaths and a heartbeat a tempo he could fall asleep to.

But Kate gets up, pushing back her side of the blankets and leaves the room.

She never keeps the same hours as him, never made the adjustment, but the dark circles under her eyes grow blacker every day.

(Some days he thinks of leaving, some days he regrets ever coming back.)

 

 

 

 

 

Kate sleeps with a stake under her pillow, thin but made of strong wood, a weapon Freddie had given her when they parted ways, his eyes skating from her face to Scott’s hovering behind her shoulder. Scott finds it one afternoon, half-waking and stretching into the space Kate had left, his fingertips brushing down the length and jerking back. He holds it, sitting on the edge of the motel bed until she comes back, slipping in with a container of food and new wallet in her hand.

(they both had their mentors, teaching them things their parents never did–to steal, to kill, Scott wonders what they might think, if his father was right, if they were watching over them now)

“He killed her, you know,” Scott says when Kate stills, eyes wide and blue, watching him twirl her stake in his hands.

“Scott,” she breathes, setting the container down on the table, someone else’s wallet next to it. “Daddy was trying to help her, she was sick–”

He laughs, tossing the stake up in the air, catching it. “Just like he trying to help me, right? You can’t pray depression away, you can’t go to Mexico and run from it. I thought you’d grown up enough to know it was all bullshit–every fucking thing he ever said.”  

Kate makes a sound, like a whimper, like a wounded dog, choked back in her throat, but she doesn’t cry, stiff upper lip, sets her jaw. “Not everything.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Scott says, sighing as he stands up, rolling his shoulder back, flipping the stake so he holds it by the pointed end and offers it to her; Kate grabs the other end, but Scott doesn’t let go. “I thought you trusted me, guess I should have known better.”

Scott lets go and pushes past her, walking out of the room now that dusk had fallen.

 

 

 

 

 

It was an accident, (he curled too close in his sleep, winding around her heat and pressing his face against her throat–he let her shove him back and roll on top of him, stake in hand, hearing her heart loud and pounding in his head, scenting fear in the air), not that she would believe him, digging the pointed end of her stake into the gap between his ribs, knees around his hips, pinning him to the bed.

“Gonna save my soul, Katie?” Scott asks her, arching against the stake, grabbing for her wrist. “ _Do it_. I know you can.”

Kate trembles and shudders above him, but he holds her hand firm. “You keep killing people,  _you killed dad_.”

“And I’ll keep doing it, it’s what I am now. Come on,  _do it_.”

Scott counts the rapid beats of her heart and closes his eyes, scents the salt edging from her eyes–he feels when Kate drops the stake, hears the gasping sobs she releases when she shakes of his hand and drags herself off of him, the loud slam of the door.

He finds her later by the dumpster, once the sun had faded in the sky, bare feet on gravel, still not dressed. Kate lets him watch when she tosses the stake in, turning away from it and meeting his eyes. She inhales deep, but doesn’t apologize–neither of them do, not anymore, new life, new rules, ingrained forgiveness no longer reactionary.

Kate grabs for his hand and drags him along beside her.

“I keep my promises,” she says, quiet but he hears her, and begins to understand.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://richiesseth.tumblr.com)!


End file.
